Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on September 14, 2021

The most solemn of Jewish religious holidays, Yom Kippur, will be observed by the Chabad Jewish Center of Chino Hills on Wednesday, Sept. 15 and Thursday, Sept. 16.

Rabbi Mendy Harlig invites the community to both observances, but space is limited due to COVID restrictions.

To RSVP and to receive the address for the location, call the rabbi at (909) 890-8677 or email him at rabbi@jew ishchinohills.com.

Yom Kippur, also known as the Day of Atonement, is the holiest day of the year for the Jewish people and is observed with fasting and prayer.

It concludes the 10 days of repentance that began with Rosh Hashana, known as the Jewish New Year.

Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the yearthe day on which we are closest to God and to the quintessence of our own souls, Rabbi Harlig said.

The Kol Nidrei service will be held at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 15 and the Yizkor Memorial Service will be held at 12:45 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 16, he said.

Kol Nidrei, the prayer which ushers in the holiday of Yom Kippur, is perhaps the most famous one in our liturgy, said the rabbi. Ironically, it is not really a prayer at all, but rather a statement.

The statement deals with promises, vows, and other sorts of verbal commitments commonly made in the course of the year, he said.

Kol Nidrei, which means all vows, nullifies the binding nature of such promises in advance, said Rabbi Harlig.

On Yom Kippur, when the essence of the soul is fully revealed, we express our real attitude towards the imperfections that might slip into our behavior in the coming year, he said.

They are thus denied and declared insignificant, he added.

An evening service follows Kol Nidrei that consists of the Half-Kaddish, the Shema, the Amidah, the Al Chet confession of sins, and special additional prayers which are said only on the night of Yom Kippur.

Yizkor, in Hebrew, means remember. It is not only the first word of the prayer, it also represents its overall theme, he said. In this prayer, we implore God to remember the souls of our relatives and friends that have passed on, he said.

When we recite Yizkor, we renew and strengthen the connection between us and our loved ones, bringing merit to the departed souls, elevating them in their celestial homes, he said.

The main component of Yizkor is the private pledge to give charity following the holiday in honor of the deceased.

Rabbi Harlig and his wife Esther lead the Chabad Jewish Center of Chino Hills.

The goal is to establish a center in Chino Hills or a nearby community for classes, workshops, religious services, Shabbat meals, and special events.

Current programs include synagogue services, adult education, the Jewish Womens Circle, and more.

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Yom Kippur to be observed in Chino Hills with Rabbi Harlig - Chino Champion

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Posted By admin on September 14, 2021

One day, the rabbi will give them a fitting burial.

Aaron Melman has yet to reach that point: to lay to rest the work boots he wore ministering to New York City firefighters at the devastated World Trade Center on Sept. 12, 2001.

"I haven't worn them since then, mostly because they have the remains of human beings on them. So I've put them in a plastic bag, and when I am ready, I will bury the remains of those boots in a cemetery," said Melman, now in his 18th year at Congregation Beth Shalom in Northbrook, the last six as head rabbi.

In September 2001 Aaron Melman was a 26-year-old student chaplain with the New York City Fire Department. He served under FDNY Chaplain Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, now the executive vice president of The New York Board of Rabbis.

Melman lived on the upper west side of Manhattan, 110th Street and Broadway. It was a great day to be alive in New York City the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

"Life was pretty normal. It was a gorgeous day in New York. I'll never forget how beautiful the weather was," he said.

It was the first thing he'll never forget about that day and its aftermath.

"Then the reports started to come in; you started to hear sirens constantly. No one really knew what was happening, and as the reports in the news said a plane had hit the towers, there still was the feeling that it was an accident.

"I don't know that anyone could fathom what was to unfold," he said.

Nearly 3,000 people died when al-Qaida terrorists piloted four planes into the World Trade Center's twin towers, the Pentagon, and into a Pennsylvania field, an attack thought to be directed at the United States Capitol but was thwarted by heroic passengers.

"Looking back on that day, there's so many emotions," Melman said. "It's nice to know the families of those who lost loved ones were able to move forward with their lives while maintaining the memories of their loved ones who died that day."

Yet the holes in those families and the ramifications of the attack, the security measures, the wars, have lingered well after the hours Melman, and the rest of us, "fixated on the TV" as details and horrid images came in.

For most of the day on Sept. 12, Melman joined Potasnik ministering to responders at ground zero.

"We made our way from group of firefighters to group of firefighters, checking in on them," said Melman, who still keeps in touch with Potasnik.

"At that moment they still were very much in rescue mode, and not recovery mode, so there was still a hope that they would find people alive who were buried."

He said he and Potasnik went to the responders as they took brief rests on the rubble of the collapsed buildings -- "known as 'on top of the pile,'" Melman said -- and in surrounding buildings that also were unsafe to enter.

"I think they were very much focused on the task at hand and wanting to get back to work as soon as they could to help rescue their brothers and civilians," Melman said.

"I would say we were ministering to them on a surface level, just checking in to make sure they were doing OK and if they needed anything from us."

Caked with dust and dirt, hours later Melman took the train home. His fellow New Yorkers had no doubt what he'd been up to.

"People were looking at me on the subway with the understanding of where I had been. A look of thanks, almost, I would say."

He returned to the site several times in the days that followed, and visited some of the fire stations near his Manhattan home.

Melman's experiences at ground zero locked in place a desire for greater service, which already had been inspired by family and friends.

His father, Neil, served in the United States Army Reserve during the Vietnam War. A cousin served in the Illinois National Guard. One of Melman's friends was a chaplain in the Massachusetts National Guard.

Melman serves as chaplain for the Northbrook Fire Department. And in Springfield on March 17, 2021, he was sworn in to the Illinois Army National Guard as a chaplain. He'll return to the U.S. Army Chaplain Center and School in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, in October for two more months of training.

With the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 disaster coming between the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Melman said he will include a memorial to that day in his Saturday service at Beth Shalom, around a theme of remembrance.

Some memories remain relevant.

"I think one of the things missing from our society today is the civility and kindness that was displayed after the terrorist act. I'm hoping that we can get back to that type of acceptance of one another one day soon. It brought us together, and we find ourselves more apart then ever today," Melman said.

Other memories should perhaps, like his work boots, remain locked away.

"I'm still, to this day, not sure how it has affected me," Melman said. "I don't think I will ever fully process what it is that I saw that day and what I did that day, because I don't think the human mind is still able to comprehend the magnitude of what happened."

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'Looking back on that day, there's so many emotions': Northbrook rabbi recalls his time at ground zero in 2001 - Chicago Daily Herald

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Posted By admin on September 14, 2021

Dear Editor,

I would like to respond to Rabbi Jonathan Romains and the former Archbishop George Careys essay, There is nothing holy about agony: religious people and leaders support assisted dying too (9 September 2021).

Firstly, the terms employed by Rabbi Romain and former Archbishop Carey serve to empty assisted dying of any connotations other than one of being a professional, medical procedure. Yet, upon more considered thought, there is no reason to medicalise or sanitise assisted dying or even to call it assisted dying in the first place as opposed to, say, facilitated murder or suicide. Furthermore, a doctor is not perforce the ideal functionary necessary to carry out assisted suicide or to have the power to vote it in its favour. Since Classical times, a doctors primary obligation has been to heal their patients, to first do no harm, not to end life, even if such would mean an end to the persons pain.

However, most deceiving of all is the sweeping, groundless assertion that despite the fact that there has been such strong opposition to assisted dying by some religious groups. Strangely, it is not largely on theological grounds, because there is nothing in our bibles or prayer books that directly mentions this matter. On the contrary, even a cursory glance at the Jewish prayer book, for example, reveals a direct opposition to assisted dying. One of the very first passages contain within the Jewish prayer book, to be said each day upon waking, is: God, the life-force you placed within me is pure; you created it, formed it, and breathed it into me. One day you will take it from me. As long as this life-force is within me, I will thank you. Every comprehensive Jewish prayer book also contains the ancient oral Jewish teaching that against your will you are born, against your will you live, and against your will you die.

That does not mean to say that Judaism is a religion devoid of compassion. The prayer books many pages are replete with pleas to heal the afflictions of the sick and show mercy to all Creation to alleviate and not to celebrate suffering. Its prayers, filled with Biblical psalms, recited three times a day by religious Jews, calls on man to feel the pain of others and unwaveringly support the ill and vulnerable. It reads as one emphatic appeal to the supplicant to have empathy with all people on Earth, to be with them in their suffering. Furthermore, the bible recognises the reality of human suffering. Several of the most righteous Biblical personalities crumbled under the burden of their troubles and pleaded with God to die (as Moses cried out: If this is the way you [God] treat me, please kill me!). Yet even so never was one sanctioned to kill himself; neither was another person granted with the right to assist him to do so. According to Jewish Law, such would be murder as a persons life despite the unbearable, torturous agony which may consume it remains, just as that early morning prayer proclaims, under Gods ownership and not ours. The verse in Genesis, in the opening chapters of the bible, states somewhat wordily, The blood of your lives [spilled by murder] will I [God] require [i.e. accountability from the murderer] from the hand of man, from the hand of a persons brother [namely, even if such murder was mercy-killing, killing ones brother], will I require [punishment for taking] the life of man.

To be sure, end of life treatment in Orthodox Judaism, a legal-system formed and dictated by a vast and complicated mass of Talmudic law, is a delicate and complex area which requires the navigations and rulings of only the most qualified halakhic experts. Additionally, there is nuance in regards to end of life treatment. However, active assisted suicide nevertheless lies beyond the pale (see, for example, the writings of Professor J David Bleich).

In short, there certainly is biblical and theological opposition to assisted dying, one just needs to open the prayer book and turn to its very first pages or casually purview the opening chapters of Genesis to find it. I understand Rabbi Romains and the former Archbishops position and appreciate that it is motivated by genuine compassion for the terminally ill, the result of having personally witnessed the physical pain and crippling distress of those imminently facing an inevitable death. However, if they want to be true to their titles, the least they could do is open a prayer book. They would see that a law to allow assisted dying would be a step too far for many religious groups. They themselves may be unwilling to stand in prayer with the Jewish prayer book filled with scriptural verses and used for a millennium by the faithful uttering the refrain, repeated three times a day by Jews, that God owns all, including our lives. Yet many religious people still do. Whilst those adherents plead daily that God should ease the pain of the sick and perhaps even that God should end those poor, tormented lives, those same religious people nevertheless accept that we human beings are forbidden biblically and theologically from assisting in anothers suicide; that the life-force inside of us is exclusively Gods to take.

Gavriel Cohn

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A Response to Rabbi Romain's and the former Archbishop Carey: There is indeed Biblical and Theological Opposition to Assisted Dying - The BMJ

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Posted By admin on September 14, 2021

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The pope's comments risk a return of the 'teaching of contempt' prevalent in the Catholic Church until the last century, Rabbi Rasson Arousi warns

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The Vatican has rejected criticism from senior Israeli rabbis over remarks by Pope Francis about Jewish books of sacred law, saying he was not questioning their continuing validity for Jews today.

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Last month Reuters reported that Rabbi Rasson Arousi, who is in charge of the Israeli Chief Rabbinates relations with the Vatican, had written a stern letter to the Vatican in which he said that Francis comments at a general audience on Aug. 11 appeared to suggest that the Torah, or Jewish law, was obsolete.

The Vaticans official response, seen by Reuters on Friday, said the popes comments in a homily on the writings of St. Paul should not be extrapolated from their context of ancient times and had no bearings on todays Jews.

The abiding Christian conviction is that Jesus Christ is the new way of salvation. However, this does not mean that the Torah is diminished or no longer recognized as the way of salvation for Jews,' wrote Cardinal Kurt Koch, whose Vatican department covers religious relations with Jews.

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In his catechesis the Holy Father does not make any mention of modern Judaism; the address is a reflection on (St. Pauls) theology within the historical context of a given era, Koch wrote.

The fact that the Torah is crucial for modern Judaism is not questioned in any way, he said.

The Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, contains hundreds of commandments for Jews to follow in their everyday lives. The measure of adherence to the wide array of guidelines differs between Orthodox Jews and Reform Jews.

In his letter to Koch in August, Arousi said the popes comments risked a return of the teaching of contempt that was prevalent in the Catholic Church until the last century.

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Bearing in mind the positive affirmations constantly made by Pope Francis on Judaism, it cannot in any way be presumed that he is returning to a so-called doctrine of contempt' Koch wrote.

Pope Francis fully respects the foundations of Judaism and always seeks to deepen the bonds of friendship between the two faith traditions, he said.

Relations between Catholics and Jews were revolutionized in 1965, when the Second Vatican Council repudiated the concept of collective Jewish guilt for the death of Jesus and began decades of inter-religious dialog. Francis and his two predecessors visited synagogues.

Francis has had a good relationship with Jews. While still archbishop in his native Buenos Aires, he co-wrote a book with one of the citys rabbis, Abraham Skorka, and has maintained a lasting friendship with him.

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Pope Francis and Israels chief rabbi in dispute over the Torahs relevance to Jews - National Post

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Posted By admin on September 14, 2021

The country may be talking about lockdowns and permanent closures, but in Westhampton Beach the Hampton Synagogue is thriving. The popular Jewish congregation run by the oft dubbed rabbi-to-the-stars Marc Schneier hasnt let the pandemic slow it down. In fact, they plowed ahead with construction of a massive addition to their synagogue, named Jacks House and the Levin Family Childrens Campus. The campus will encompass a full block providing facilities like an athletic field, volleyball court, regulation basketball court, swimming pool, playground, STEM learning center, music studio, art studio, library, multi-sensory learning and activity studio and a childrens chapel.

The campus is exclusively for the children of the congregation and for the children of the community, says Rabbi Schneier. Its going to be a central point and an essential destination for children from all walks of life in our community. The seating will be the kind of seating for little children and even the Torah scroll will not be a regular size, it will be more of a mid-sized Torah scroll, keeping with the theme of children. For the children of the congregation, its going to be their sacred space, its going to be their chapel where theyre going to congregate on Saturday mornings, with their junior congregation running parallel to the service in the main center. The campus is slated to be completed in spring 2022.

In addition to this unparalleled facility, Rabbi Schneier has announced that the Hampton Synagogue will be the recipient of two new projects by glass sculptor Dale Chihuly an installation at the aforementioned childrens chapel and a separate Holocaust Memorial dedicated to the 1.5 million children who were murdered during the Holocaust. Both projects are slated to be completed in the upcoming months.

How has Rabbi Schneier managed to pull off these impressive undertakings in the midst of the pandemic? People were looking to galvanize around a big project, a big idea or a big initiative. They were looking for that ray of hope, for an initiative that would focus on the future and not on the present, he says. The congregation has really stepped up in the most magnanimous and generous way. I think that in this spirit, the Hampton Synagogue has been very unique in leading and setting an example of finding opportunities in the midst of all these challenges and obstacles.

As for how Rabbi Schneier came to Dale Chihuly specifically, its all thanks to his mother, Donna Schneier, who was an early collector of the artists work and has maintained a relationship with him for years. She made the introduction to Dale Chihuly, and he readily embraced the opportunity. Hes now turning 80, and he very much sees this as a legacy project at this stage of his life, he says.

Rabbi Schneier goes on to say that the colors that Chihuly is featuring are those used at the time of creation and explains what these colors represent. They are the colors of the breast plates that were worn by the High Priests in the Holy Temple, he says. The High Priests had 12 stones representing the 12 tribes of Israel and each stone had a different color, so its not only a question of his designing and creating pretty colored glass windows, but both the colors from the chapel the 36 windows and the Holocaust Memorial will be based on the colors of Biblical narratives.

In addition to the synagogues new childrens center, they now have a nationwide television platform where they televise their Shabbat services pre-recorded to more than 76 million homes across America on NBC/Comcast. One can always look and one should look, for opportunities in the midst of challenging times to bring people that ray of hope and that sense of optimism, Rabbi Schneier says.

Rabbi Schneier sees these art projects not only as opening up a whole new avenue for the children of the Hamptons community, but that theyre also going to translate into the Village of Westhampton Beach, becoming an art destination. What we envision, because of these unique Chihuly glass installations, is that thousands of people will come from far and wide to visit the Hampton Synagogue Childrens Center and its campus. The avenue of arts will draw many wonderful people, art connoisseurs and art aficionados to the Village of Westhampton Beach.

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Major Happenings Announced at the Hampton Synagogue - Dan's Papers

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Posted By admin on September 14, 2021

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1933

The Nazis set up the first concentration camp at Dachau. The first inmates are 200 Communists.

Books with ideas considered dangerous to Nazi beliefs are burned.

1934

1935

1936

The Olympic Games are held in Germany; signs barring Jews are removed until the event is over.

Jews no longer have the right to vote.

1938

On Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, Nazis terrorized Jews throughout Germany and Austria 30,000 Jews are arrested.

Jews must carry id cards and Jewish passports are marked with a J.

Jews no longer head businesses, attend plays, concerts, etc.;

all Jewish children are moved to Jewish schools.

Jewish businesses are shut down; they must sell businesses and hand over securities and jewels.

Jews must hand over driverss licenses and car registrations.

Jews must be in certain places at certain times.

1939

World War II begins as Britain and France declare war on Germany.

Hitler orders that Jews must follow curfews; Jews must turn in radios to the police; Jews must wear yellow stars of David.

1940

Jews are forced into ghettos.

Nazis begin the first mass murder of Jews in Poland.

-Jews are put into concentration camps.

1941

Jews throughout Western Europe are forced into ghettos.

-Jews may not leave their houses without permission form the police.

-Jews may no longer use public telephones.

1942

-Jews are forbidden to: subscribe to newspapers; keep dogs, cats, birds, etc; keep electrical equipment including typewriters; own bicycles; buy meat, eggs, or mild; use public transportation; attend school.

1943

1944

1945

The Holocaust is over and the death camps are emptied.

Many survivors are placed in displaced persons facilities.

1946

At Nuremburg, Nazi leaders are tried for war crimes by the above Judicial assembly.

1947

Excerpt from:

HISTORY OF THE HOLOCAUST - TIME LINE | The Holocaust ...

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Posted By admin on September 14, 2021

23 Pictures That Capture The Horrors Of The Holocaust Skip To Content

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Saturday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. "To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time." Elie Wiesel

Posted on January 27, 2018, at 10:58 a.m. ET

Tourists stand between the snow-covered concrete steles of Berlin's Holocaust Memorial on Jan. 18, 2017.

Mugshots of Jewish children in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Oswiecim, Poland.

High-voltage fences surrounded the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland. The camp was liberated by the Soviet army on Jan. 27, 1945.

A pile of flowers lay beneath the 'death wall' inside the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum.

Shoes from victims of genocide at the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz.

Left: Tatiana Bucci (left) and Andra Bucci (right) after their liberation from Auschwitz and their reunification with their parents in in 1946. Right: Mira and Giovanni Bucci on their wedding in 1935. Mira, who was Jewish, was deported with the couple's two daughters, Andra and Tatiana, to Auschwitz in 1944.

Auschwitz and Belsen concentration camp survivor Eva Behar shows her prisoner number that was tattooed on her arm by her Nazi captors.

Star worn by Jewish prisoners at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany.

Gallows where prisoners were executed at Fort Breendonk, Belgium.

Glasses that belonged to people brought to Auschwitz for extermination.

Victim memorials in a cell at the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany. The victims are named as Michael Zajac (19081941), Albert Kuntz (18961945) and Julius Silbermann (19051938).

Manacles and leg irons on display at the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany.

A hook projects its shadow on the wall in the "Strangling Room," called Leichenkeller (corpse cellar) by the Nazis, in the basement of the crematorium in Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany, where 1,100 prisoners were garroted and hanged by the SS. The camp, established by the Nazis in 1937, was one of the first and the largest on German soil, housing some 250,000 prisoners between 1937 and 1945. 65,000 prisoners were killed or died during this period.

The bunks in the women's barracks at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum.

The interior of the gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum.

The gas "shower" at Majdanek concentration camp in Lublin, Poland. The Majdanek concentration camp was a death camp built in 1941 by orders of the commander of the SS, Heinrich Himmler.

Crematorium chambers in the former Majdanek Nazi concentration camp.

A single white rose sits on a dissection table in the pathology department at the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany.

Relics found at a former rubbish dump are displayed as part of the historical exhibition at former concentration camp Buchenwald. Between July 1937 and April 1945, the Nazis imprisoned a quarter-million people at Buchenwald, with a death toll of around 56,000. Buchenwald was liberated on April 11, 1945 by US troops.

A death roll from the concentration camp Buchenwald that reads "auf der Flucht erschossen," "shot while attempting to flee."

An open-air mass cremation place in former Nazi German concentration camp Stutthof in Sztutowo, Poland. Stutthof was the first Nazi concentration camp built outside of Germany. Completed in September 1939, it was located in a secluded, wet, and wooded area west of the small town of Sztutowo in the Freie Stadt Danzig area.

Raised mounds marking some of the 13 mass graves at the site of the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony, Germany.

A BuzzFeed News investigation, in partnership with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, based on thousands of documents the government didn't want you to see.

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23 Pictures That Capture The Horrors Of The Holocaust

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Posted By admin on September 14, 2021

Pope Francis paid tribute on Monday to the thousands of Slovak Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust.

The comments came during the pontiff's official visit to Slovakia, and among a backdrop of tensions surrounding the Catholic Church's possible role in the atrocities of the Holocaust in Slovakia.

Speaking at a former Jewish neighborhood in the capital Bratislava, Francis sharply criticized "the frenzy of hatred" in World War II as well as continuing antisemitism.

"Dear brothers and sisters, your history is our history, your sufferings are our sufferings," he told Jewish leaders.

"Here, in this place, the Name of God was dishonored," the 84-year-old pope said. The site was where the city's synagogue once stood. It survived the war, but was torn down by the communists.

During the war, Slovakia was governed by a Nazi puppet regime that was led by Catholic priest Jozef Tiso.

"Here, reflecting on the history of the Jewish people marked by this tragic affront to the most high, we admit with shame how often his ineffable name has been used for unspeakable acts of inhumanity," Francis said.

"Let us unite in condemning all violence and every form of anti-Semitism," he added.

Under Tiso and his regime, all democratic parties were banned in Slovakia. He also signed several antisemitic laws and deported over 70,000 Jews to Nazi concentration camps in Germany.

The issue is a sensitive one in the Catholic Church, with many church leaders reluctant to admit the church's role in the Holocaust, news agency DPA reported, quoting former parliamentary speaker Frantisek Miklosko.

The Catholic Church has also been criticized in Slovakia for not condemning Tiso or especially distancing itself from him.

In 1947, Tiso was sentenced to death and was hanged. In the decades after the war, scholars uncovered church documents showing that the Vatican disapproved of Tiso's policies and tried to intervene to stop deportations although the deportations resumed when Nazi troops arrived in Slovakia.

Pope Francis arrived in Slovakia on Sunday following a trip to Hungary. He will remain in Slovakia until Wednesday. It's the 84-year-old's first international trip since undergoing intestinal surgery in July.

rs/wmr (AP, AFP, dpa)

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Slovakia: Pope Francis expresses 'shame' over Holocaust victims - DW (English)

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WARSAW, Poland Warsaws Jewish community has buried an unidentified Holocaust victim whose remains were discovered this summer in a building that was within the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II.

We are here as the family for a person we dont know, Poland Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich said as the bones, wrapped in white cloth, lay on a wooden cart and community members gathered.

Four men pulled the cart to the grave, where the bones were buried with soil from Israel, and Jewish leaders recited Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead.

The ceremony took place in Warsaws Jewish Cemetery, one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Europe in a city that was a leading center of Jewish life until the Holocaust.

Leslaw Piszewski, chairman of the Jewish Community in Warsaw, said the burial was all the more emotional coming on the eve of Yom Kippur, the most sacred day in the Jewish calendar.

After nearly 80 years, this unknown person got his dignity back, Piszewski said. This is very important. This is the only thing that we can do for the unknown victim.

The remains were discovered due to a water break in a building in Muranow, a Warsaw district that was largely Jewish before the war and was the site of the Warsaw Ghetto during the German wartime occupation of Poland.

Marek Slusarz, who lives and runs a community foundation in the building, discovered the human bones when he was searching in the basement for the source of a water break. When he and a plumber found them, he alerted the police and the Jewish community.

Its believed that the remains were those of a Jewish resident who was in hiding when German forces crushed the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 by razing the area to the ground.

After the war, the area was rebuilt on top of the wartime rubble.

Slusarz said it was a source of satisfaction to have a role in the victim receiving a dignified burial. Though he isnt Jewish, he said he hoped such events would inspire younger generations in Poland to preserve the memory of the centuries of Jewish and non-Jewish co-existence in Poland.

A representative from the Israeli embassy laid a wreath at the ceremony, and Wojciech Kolarski, secretary of state under President Andrzej Duda, also paid his respects at the funeral.

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Unidentified Holocaust victim laid to rest; remains were found in Polands former Warsaw Ghetto - Chicago Sun-Times

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Posted By admin on September 14, 2021

MIDDLETOWN, Pa. The Center for Holocaust and Jewish Studies at Penn State Harrisburg will host a discussion by Marion Kaplan, the Skirball Professor of Modern Jewish History at New York University, via webinar at noon on Wednesday, Sept. 22.

Kaplan will discuss her book, Hitlers Jewish Refugees: Hope and Anxiety in Portugal, which describes the experiences of Jewish refugees as they fled Hitlers regime and then lived in limbo in Portugal until they could reach safer havens abroad.

Kaplan is a three-time National Jewish Book Award winner for The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family and Identity in Imperial Germany (1991), Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (1998), and Gender and Jewish History (with Deborah Dash Moore, 2011), as well as a finalist for Dominican Haven: The Jewish Refugee Settlement in Sosua (2008).

Her other monographs include: The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germany and Jewish Daily Life in Germany, 1618-1945 (ed.). She has also edited several books on German Jewish and womens history and has taught courses on German-Jewish history, European womens history, German and European history, as well as European Jewish history, and Jewish womens history. Hitlers Jewish Refugees: Hope and Anxiety in Portugal, 1940-45, her newest book, was published by Yale University Press in 2020.

This event is free and open to the public. For additional information, contact Neil Leifert at 717-580-2954 or chjs@psu.edu.

Last Updated September 14, 2021

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The Center for Holocaust and Jewish Studies to welcome author Marion Kaplan | Penn State University - Penn State News

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